China 'used Top Gun footage' as military drill

LOS ANGELES - Chinese state television has been accused of broadcasting a clip from the film Top Gun and claiming it is from a real air force exercise. The footage broadcast was said to show a Chinese J-10 fighter firing a missile during manoeuvres and destroying another aircraft. But film buffs noticed distinct similarities to an aerial combat scene from the Hollywood blockbuster, in which Tom Cruise plays a maverick airman at an elite school for United States naval aviators. The image of the targeted aircraft exploding looked identical to an explosion towards the end of Top Gun, when Cruise's character hits a Russian plane with a missile. The footage, which has been taken down from the CCTV website, will prove an embarrassment for the state broadcaster. In a previous case in 2007, the state-run Xinhua news agency issued a news story about a discovery related to multiple ...